The Senate late Thursday forwarded legislation to President Barack Obama granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they’re watching on Netflix. While lawmakers were caving to special interests, however, they cut from the legislative package language requiring the authorities to get a warrant to read your e-mail or other data stored in the cloud.

But another part of the same Senate package — sweeping digital privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud — was removed at the last minute.

Currently, the government can obtain e-mail or other cloud documents without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. The authorities only need to demonstrate, often via an administrative subpoena, that it has “reasonable grounds to believe” the information would be useful in an investigation.

Leahy has repeatedly sought to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, but he finds little support for it among fellow lawmakers or with the President Barack Obama administration.

I see the laws they pass, I see the laws they want to pass, I see the abuse of authority, finances, and technology, (just to name a few) I see the willingness of my neighbor(s) to promote and sustain all this and more, and I am horrified at the probable outcome.............

My faith in "our neighbors" is a little shakey right now but ultimately I think we'll be OK.

The Christmas holiday was a good opportunity to talk with nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles who have no idea traffic cameras and mandatory seatbelt fines are not the norm (for example).

I and a few other adults explained the intrusiveness and heavy hand of the state for purely tax/fee/surcharge/ extraction purposes. Now they will go and talk to their peers and share it with them. Its what responsible people do.

They're not ready for corporate/government capture of our liberty for profit (and more taxation) but the weeds have now been beat down for another generation...clearing a path as it were.

I just a few minutes ago for the first time ever began to back-up my iphone to the icloud...three minutes in, 14 to go, I began reading this post....12 minutes to go, backup terminated/cancelled.

A few minutes before that, I opened a letter from my good friends with the DC Gumint, telling me I owe them $200 for some speed-camera issued ticket located in some new speed trap with a 35 mile an hour limit where *everyone* goes, and should go, 50 or more. A few days ago, I read where DC issued a speed trap ticket to a parked car, for speeding. Earlier today, I read that DC is doubling speed-trap-cams, having raised $85MM in short order recently. Fucking fascist scum, bad people screwing good people.

My Gubmint is a fucking creep. The less I have to do with the asswipe, the better. No cloud, facebook, gmail, etc. for me. And no checks to DC, where the entire Gubmint is run by criminals.

"I read where DC issued a speed trap ticket to a parked car, for speeding."

Classic. Reminds of a story a friend told me: a guy he knew went to court to challenge a speeding ticket; he submitted the radar gun used as evidence, then clocked the judge in his chair doing 125mph; case dismissed.

Great opportunity for a code writing entrepreneur to devise a product that scrubs the cloud every 175 days but reminds user how to back up critical content on a device to stick in a safe or something, out of the cloud, before automatic scrub erase. It is technologically doable. And then convenience of cloud could still be utilized.

The government is already collecting every email and text message that you send. Whistleblowers have come out multiple times and told us this. Text is too easy to record and store for them to not be doing it.

This changes nothing other than making it more legal for them to be doing so. Theyll also be able to more openly use the data that theyve collected. All-in-all nothing has changed and you wont beat the system with a workaround outside of avoiding the internet altogether.

In the former East Germany, the STASI had a similar tactic but they had to rely on index cards. Millions upon tens of millions of index cards, filling buildings built just to hold the thousand and thousands of drawers that held the millions and millions of index cards. All the index cards filed by thousands of persons whose only job was to file the cards "in the right place." So many index cards they ultimately didn't know what to do with them. Indeed, they didn't have search engines, but at the same time they didn't have to rely on electricity running constantly to "maintain" the index cards.

As some collectors (think Beanie Babies) who "get carried away" can attest, it's not always true that "If a Little Is Good, A Lot is Better." There must be some kind of a Malthusian point where it becomes overwhelming.

there aren't enough people in the world to read everything they will store...

Umm... ever heard of computers? They're REALLY good at reading and analyzing text. Analyzing and storing every email on the planet is easy. They're doing it in Maryland right now and will shortly be doing it with better search features in Utah.

"there aren't enough people in the world to read everything they will store..."

True, but that's not relevant. Storage and analysis is all done by machine. The only two humans left in the process are the guy that reads the analysis' recommendations and the guy who answers his phone call, the drone operator. How soon will it be before they're replaced, too?